Sunday, December 27, 2009

A Very Curmudgeonly Christmas

I am not, by nature, a very Christmas-y kinda person. I am, in fact, a bit of a curmudgeon.

No, scratch that. I’m a major curmudgeon.

You may ask, what is a curmudgeon? The “according to Hoyle” (or in this case, Webster) definition is “A crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man.”

But it’s more than that. I prefer to think of a curmudgeon as a person who sees the world for what it is - trouble.

I’ve always had curmudgeonly tendencies – sort of a curmudgeon-in-training, if you will. But since I turned 40 (nearly a year ago!), I have officially hung my curmudgeon shingle outside my door; no longer an apprentice, but a full fledged journeyman with his eyes finally wide open.

My curmudgeonly ways come to me by way of a black streak of curmudgeonliness that runs in my paternal line. In fact, I dare say that even if Axe didn’t want to be a curmudgeon, he would have little ability to circumvent it.

Axe may deny that he is wired that way – heaven knows I tried. Axe may even delude himself into believing that that is the truth. But one day, he’ll be having a conversation with someone and that someone will say something so incomprehensibly ignorant that he will be force to speak out against it. And it may not even be a conversation; it could something someone on the television said. Or something he read online or in an article.

And he will be force to speak out against it.

Even if he is the only person in the room.

Curmudgeon runs deep in a Barron male. Axe, if you are reading this some twenty years from now and you still doubt me, ask your mother (or your Golly, or your Grammy) if it’s true.

The hot, tar like streak of curmudgeon sticks to a Barron male like crude oil to a pelican’s feathers.

On the bright side Squeaker should be spared, as Barron females carry nary a trace of the black streak. Go figure.

But I digress. Back to the point of the post.

This is the first Christmas we've had a Christmas tree since we've had kids.

Not for lack of money, or belief in the holiday or anything like that; it’s just been impractical – either the kids have been too young or we were Xmasing at someone else’s house (someone who had to have a tree).

But this year, we had to get a tree; if it had just been Axe, we could have pushed another year, but The Squeaker knows Christmas.

While Squeak knows Xmas, she hasn’t got the open-presents-on-a-specific-day part down. The first presents we put under the tree were savagely attacked weeks before the socially agreed upon time.

So we had to hide all presents until Christmas Eve. Until after they went to bed on Christmas Eve.

There were lots of presents for both the kids, but the big present for Squeak was a kitchen and for Axe, a ride on Mater (of Cars fame).

Both were big hits.

We did have a couple of surprise hits – A Barbie doll and Matchbox cars.

Squeak got a Barbie as a Christmas party gift and suddenly it was, “Barbie, Barbie, Barbie.”

She now wants everything Barbie. It was really weird, almost cult-ish. One day, she was oblivious to the 50 year old blonde bombshell, the next she must have it ALL. It’s like the initial doll must have a brainwashing mechanism in it… sorry, my curmudgeon-ness coming out.

Axe hasn’t gone “all things Matchbox,” but he did TOTALLY get them. He has a toy garage with a wrap around road (made for some other type of large plastic car) and he spent 10-20 minutes (an eternity for him) running the Matchbox cars around the loop.

It was a great Christmas and now that we’ve done it once, we’ll have to do it again.